Coaching And Feedback | Coach Train Learn

Posts Tagged ‘Coaching and Feedback’

Leading Others? Give Feedback!

Ironically, it often feels easier not to give feedback. For most people, whatever their role, the concern with what can be seen to be a confrontation is so much easier to delay, prevaricate with and – in many cases – simply put off altogether.

And that makes matters worse, almost every time.

Here are three ideas to help you get past giving feedback.

1. Be Fast and Frequent

When circumstances present themselves to give feedback, see it as a very positive opportunity. And then give that feedback, because it’s there for the value it can offer.

Giving feedback needs to be a regular activity, so that you begin to overcome the fear factor that so often comes with those much maligned words, ‘Would you like some feedback?’

The more you give feedback – not forgetting that it can so often simply be positive, without that negative sting in the tail – the more your people will learn to like it and be less defensive. Indeed, the goal we all seek as managers is where we add value by providing great feedback as a resource.

The better you give it soon after the event, such that it’s still relevant and fresh too, will be more effective than a few days later. Delaying says much about your level of self-esteem.

2. Make Feedback Two-Way

Being prepared to accept feedback means that you walk your own talk and your employees start to see the real reason behind feedback.

It’s actually there to help.

When we hear feedback, unless the language, trust and environment is perfect, it’s very easy to be defensive in response. When as employees, we see our boss able to receive feedback willingly, appreciate it and be seen to develop themselves too, we start to want some of that.

As managers, accepting and showing the changes we make when we receive it, means feedback starts to be seen as not the monster with which it is so often tarnished.

3. What Do They Think?

Giving feedback has a prior step. Ask people if they would like to give themselves feedback first, listen and acknowledge and then share yours too.

And remember, ensuring that you acknowledge their positives first, shows just how much you value them as individuals and helps encourage people to try a different approach in the future in those areas where they might be better.

Employees pretty much do 95+% of their roles really well, so showing them perspectives of the opportunities to be even better needs to reflect how good they are first.

Want more? For 10 top tips on Effective Feedback, checkout here

How to Manage 14% Better

Many organisations now use surveys to see how they are doing. Some are focused at customers and clients, whilst others look at how the employees think their workplace is.

The majority of employee surveys fell out of a brilliant piece of work by two researchers at Gallup – Curt Coffman and Marcus Buckingham – and led to their iconic book ‘First Break All the Rules’.

They found that how employees responded to just 12 statements about the work experience would dictate the profitability of any team, department or organisation. They called these Q12.

Using Q12 required a licence from Gallup (and hence why they aren’t shown here, though you can find them if you Google them), so many organisations pinched the concept and just wrote the questions a bit differently.

In fact, over time they have added significantly to the 12 original statements, with many employees being asked to respond to up to 50 or more. Which rather defeats the object! Still, many HR and leadership teams couldn’t help themselves when given the opportunity to confuse and irritate their people!

A couple of the questions related to the employees experience of their manager. These related to interactions the manager had with them - and how recently, so I can share a story.

Jim (name changed) had faced a dire problem. On his promotion, he had inherited an operation with problems all over the place, which he’d had to fix. In the first year, sorting out core issues had been a focus expected of him by his own superiors.

When the employee survey was in, he didn’t do so well in the measures of him (though some results might have related to the previous guy too). In year two, he made a very conscious effort to be more visible to his people; to speak with them more often and to, well, be a bit happier too!

The year two results showed him still below the average for managers like him, but they had improved by over 14% on the previous year.

The moral of the story? If you want to engage better with your people (= be more effective with them), get out there and spend time with them – all of them.

You know it makes sense.

Feedback – The Most Golden of Rules

It’s funny how theory comes back to get you in the end. After so many years of reminding those in positions of authority that there are some vital rules for feedback, it takes just one occasion to show the real value of the advice.

It was a sunny morning in my local chain coffee-shop. The guy behind the counter was efficient and effective at his job and we’d shared a bit of a conversation the few times that I’d been there.

It wasn’t busy at all – in fact I walked straight to the counter to be served right away – so there was no clear reason for the behavior that followed.

The old days where you could get your coffee straight over the counter have long gone, so I moved along past the gap in the counter, to wait for my first caffeine/chocolate hit of the day.

A young lad appears next to me – clearly one of the employees there – and approaches the guy who had served me. I see my server’s name badge now and he’s got ‘Manager’ on there as well as his name.

Then the tirade begins. The manager isn’t overly loud – and yet we still can all hear him. The conversation doesn’t last for more than 20 seconds, tops.

‘You’re late again. Where’s your apron?’ The employee makes a small excuse, clearly embarrassed. ‘You said you would be 10 minutes and now it’s been 20 – AND you’ve come without your apron’.

Silence all round.

Everyone in the coffee-shop is watching, holding their breath as the scene unfolds. The manager is aggressive and in the face of the employee – even while he’s still serving the next customer.

‘Get in the back and get working’, is the final input from the manager.

Employees need to work in disciplined ways, there’s no doubt about that. When we manage people, we have to demonstrate that we too are disciplined in our own manner with them.

That ‘most golden of rules’? Well, think of this. It’s OK (when the individual concerned is OK with it), to give praise and positive feedback publicly.

And giving negative feedback is a different matter. It needs to be timely, proportional, relate to behaviors and, above all, discreetly (this usually means in private).

For anyone who manages, or leads a team of others, this is the only way. Or you run the risk of losing the respect of your people, as well as potentially losing customers too.

I will probably go back there soon for my next medio/mocha/skinny/no-foam/extra hot/to go.

But I didn’t the next day.

Thirteen Employee Benefits of Being Coached

Taking the time to create a coaching environment for your workplace can take a bit of effort, especially to start with. There are many benefits to managers to spend time on this work and, without doubt, many benefits for their people too.

When employees work with an organization, they look to provide for their families and loved ones in the first instance. Once that’s settles, they look for more.

In coaching environments, there are many opportunities for employees to shine. Their skills and talents are so often hidden from view, that it takes the work and effort of a good manager with those skills to uncover just how capable they are.

Once a coaching culture is created, there are many benefits for employees, so it becomes a no-brainer. To see why, let’s take a look at just thirteen of the employee benefits:-

•    Develop their skills – bringing out the latent, yet sometimes hidden capabilities that are their potential
•    Build confidence – with new skills, successfully being used, confidence grows and new opportunities open up
•    Learn by doing – enhances the abilities to work at challenges in real-life situations, building self-esteem
•    Feel fulfilled – once more successful, individuals feel good about themselves, taking this into their lives outside the workplace
•    Enjoy their work – challenges stimulate and enthuse, where coaching supports this development, especially in a safe place to take risk
•    Achieve more – coaching supports ongoing development, overlaying one success on the other, where there are no upper limits
•    Get more personal reward – financial rewards come and whilst valued, are often secondary to the feeling of value they enjoy
•    Enhance their CV – development through coaching support builds careers, even from a base where expectations are minimal
•    Become solution-focused rather than problem-focused – anything’s possible, rather than another difficulty in a sequence of difficulties
•    Are pro-active – coached employees start to see this as a process where they can coach themselves too, without support, so fix problems with their new found confidence
•    Ask less of you – because so often now, they can do it for themselves, contributing constructively, rather than being a burden
•    Succeed – which breeds more confidence, more challenges undertaken and then more success – a virtuous circle
•    Go home each night in a great frame on mind – and share their feelgood with their loved ones, enhancing family life too

So, with that comprehensive list of key benefits from a coaching environment, your employees are likely to be raring to go.

If you were not a manager with a coaching leaning in the past, perhaps you might be encouraged to take a closer look now!

(c) 2010 Martin Haworth. This is a short excerpt from one of 52 lessons in management development at Super Successful Manager!, an easy to use, step-by-step weekly development program for managers of EVERY skill level. Find out more at http://www.SuperSuccessfulManager.com.

Listening – The Manager’s Vital Ingredient In Employee Development

There are many tactics managers adopt when they are interacting with their teams.

On a one-to-one basis, nothing is more important than the capacity to take the time to listen effectively…

Getting to know your people well is one of the most important activities for anyone in a management or supervisory position. Armed with good knowledge about your people, you can make effective and often rapid progress.

Taking the time to spend with them, as often as you can and as one-to-one as you can is the first step, but what do you do with that important time?

Whilst many might say that spending the time telling them about your ideas and plans for the future; the way you want them to work for you and what your expectations are would be right, there is one activity that is much more important.

Taking the time to listen to them, closely where possible, is an incredibly important behavior for any manager to demonstrate, as often as they can.

So, why does listening matter as a tool to develop your people? Well, listening is the vital tool that will make you stand out as a great manager.

It has its twists and turns that you need to practice and that will enhance it as a productive skill for you as you evolve, because listening to others creates a partnership that is much more equal than the old command and control management structures.

Within that equality, you are able to leverage the perspectives, skills and talents that cumulatively, your people will bring to your team.

This is so much more than just you.

By listening carefully, you build your relationship and you help them develop. Your people learn that they themselves are powerful contributors and that you value them.

They learn as they speak as they see you listen, because it gives them the time and confidence to process thoughts and ideas as they go.

This works for many people in itself, whilst to be fair, some prefer to consider matters for themselves in their own time, yet with the time you’ve given them and that free space to air their thoughts, they will have a head start when they start to think through issues for themselves.

Listening shows them that you take them seriously and that their contribution makes a difference.

Whilst this might seem pretty much a given, you will be amazed at how many employees feel that they don’t matter and that ‘nobody ever listens’.

Even though you think you might have it right, there’s always scope to expand and learn yourself – as you listen.

Summarizing As a Communication Tool

As managers, we need to create the best interactions with our employees as we can. Understanding each other needs to be the goal, after which, everything else follows.

When we speak to each other, it’s inevitable that what is said, sometimes, maybe even often, is misunderstood, so when a message needs to be very clear, steps need to be taken to clarify it.

One excellent tactic to use is to get the person you are talking to summarize what they have heard back to you and then refine their understanding if it doesn’t match yours.

Nothing upsets employees more than when they take a course of action they believe is expected of them and they then find it wasn’t right.

By ensuring that you get them to summarize, you give them the opportunity to tell you exactly what their interpretation of the situation is. It’s how their brain has perceived the agreement and their words make that clear.

You can then tell if they have ‘got it’ as you expected, or explain the differences if needed.

Now, even then there might be a little difference in your interpretation of their words, but it’s a lot closer than it was without them summarizing.

There’s another point here too. Believe it or not, however great a manager you are, often your people will be intimidated by you, as the ‘boss’, so they will go along with what you say, meekly nodding in agreement.

If you don’t have them tell you what it is they are agreeing to, they might well leave the conversation with hardly a clue about what you really want.

Engaging in a ‘summarizing’ conversation helps them recognize that you are going to want feedback on their understanding so if they aren’t clear, they are much more likely to ask questions to help them ‘get it’ as the relationship progresses in the future.

Whilst it might sound a little cumbersome as a process, when you try it out a few times, you will find that summarizing simply becomes another part of the conversation you have. The sign that it’s working well comes when they summarize back for you without you needing to ask at all!

You have made a clear instruction; they have summarized what they have heard; you sign that off and just keep a distant, watchful eye to help them make it happen how you want it too.

It’s all part of pulling together and making the workplace much more effective and efficient. With this comes the genuine interactions that develop a team which really is able to be much more productive overall.